1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the establishment of trunks for private exchanges using Internet telephony service providers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Internet telephony services allow for the provision of telephony services at reduced costs. For enterprises (such as companies) where there is a large number of users of telephone systems the cost savings can be significant.
Typically for the provision of Internet telephony services for an enterprise there are two configuration steps required. The private branch exchange (PBX) or PBXs of the enterprise must be configured and the Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) for providing the VoIP services must be configured.
The configuration typically comprises a number of discrete steps, including: provisioning of trunks via the ITSP usually via a web interface; purchasing of telephone numbers; allocation of extension numbers or other identifiers that are used to identify individual trunks; defining of a mapping policy that defines how an ITSP number is represented by a PBX recognised format; etc. All of this information needs to be entered both at the ITSP and at the PBX. At the PBX there may typically be a need for additional processing of ITSP identifiers to enable routing to internal destinations.
In an enterprise environment with a large number of users this configuration may not be trivial. Further when updates are required the updates must also be configured at both the PBX and the ITSP.
Such a dual configuration provides a burden and is also error prone. Small businesses may typically use DSL/ADSL connections with dynamic IP addressing. In such an environment the need to update configurations to take into account dynamic IP address changes means the use of Internet telephony services may be unattractive.
It is an aim of the invention to provide an improved technique which addresses one or more of the above identified problems.